ANTIQUES

ANTIQUES; How 'Huck Finn' Was Rescued

By RITA REIF

Published: March 17, 1991

James Fraser Gluck, a Buffalo lawyer and collector, was both hero and culprit in the travels of Mark Twain's manuscript of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." A century ago, he was responsible for the preservation of Twain's heavily corrected text as well as the disappearance of half of it.

His double role in the fate of the manuscript of what many people regard as the great American novel became known last month. It was then that Sotheby's in New York announced the discovery of the long-lost first half of "Huckleberry Finn" in a trunk in a Los Angeles attic. The trunk's owners, identified only as Gluck's two granddaughters, contacted Sotheby's to authenticate their find -- 665 pages handwritten by Samuel Langhorne Clemens between 1876 and 1883.

"If James Fraser Gluck had not solicited this manuscript from Clemens, probably none of it would have survived," Paul Needham, who heads Sotheby's books and manuscripts department, said in a recent interview."It's clear that Clemens had no thoughts of trying to preserve it."

According to Mr. Needham, collectors frequently play a crucial role in preserving the writings of authors and statesmen that are essential to historians, biographers and editors.

When Sotheby's experts told the Gluck granddaughters that there were two letters proving that Clemens donated the first half of the manuscript in 1887 to what is now the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library, the women issued a statement saying that they were "sympathetic to the possibility of reuniting the manuscript."

William H. Loos, curator of the rare-book room at the Buffalo library, said that Gluck, who persuaded Clemens to donate the "Huckleberry Finn" manuscript, had sent the first and second halves at two different times. Mr. Loos speculated that Gluck "must have taken that part of the manuscript home with him, presumably to read, and possibly forgot he had it." The collector, who is regarded as the library's single most generous benefactor -- he had donated 492 autograph manuscripts and letters -- died in 1897 at the age of 45.

Indeed, the "Huckleberry Finn" manuscript was the first Twain manuscript to be collected, according to Victor Fischer, a scholar at the Mark Twain Project at the University of California at Berkeley and co-editor of the critical edition of "Huckleberry Finn." Mr. Fischer said that in later life, Clemens placed a different value on his manuscripts. In 1909 he sold two -- "Life on the Mississippi" and "Pudd'nhead Wilson" -- for a total of $2,500 to J. Pierpont Morgan.

"Without Twain's manuscripts and letters," Mr. Fischer said, "we would not have been able to exist or to publish the critical edition of his works."

Gluck, then curator of the Buffalo library, wrote to Clemens in 1885 requesting a manuscript. Five days later, the second half of "Huckleberry Finn" arrived in Buffalo, along with a letter from Clemens. "I have hunted the house over, and that is all I can find," the author wrote. He explained that the first half had probably been "shipped to the printers, who never returned it." When Clemens finally located it two years later, he sent it to Buffalo.

Gluck's tireless pursuit of manuscripts and letters was most unusual in the late 19th century. According to Mr. Loos, "It was much more common for people then to collect just autographs -- signatures -- of writers and statesmen."

Gluck's efforts resulted in scores of manuscripts and letters being donated by authors, publishers and politicians to the Buffalo library. "Gluck badgered everyone into giving," Mr. Loos said. Among the rarities donated are manuscripts of an essay by Walt Whitman on Robert Burns; Henry James's essay on Ivan Turgenev, and a manuscript for the novel "Sophie's Secret" by Louisa May Alcott.

What was not obtainable as gifts, Gluck bought, sometimes paying large sums for acquisitions that he later presented to the library. The writers represented read like a Who's Who of American and British letters, and included Dryden, Keats, Shelley, Poe, Emerson, De Quincey, Lamb, Dickens, Wordsworth, Thoreau, James Russell Lowell and Hawthorne.

"All the great rare-book libraries and manuscript collections -- with the exception of national archives -- have as their origins private collections," said Jay Dillon, a Sotheby's rare-book and manuscript specialist. "Many major collectors, including Gluck, institutionalized their collections."

One of the largest selections of Twain material to reach the market in recent years -- 60 manuscripts and letters -- was auctioned from the Estelle Doheny collection in 1988 by Christie's in New York. Among the treasures was Clemens's 1885 letter to Gluck. It was eventually sold for $19,800 to the Buffalo library, which now has one of the largest Twain collections in the country -- more than 300 items. It began with the manuscript of "Huckleberry Finn."

Photos: Samuel Langhorne Clemens--indifferent about preservation (Culver Pictures); Clemens's reply to Gluck, who had asked for the "Huck Finn" manuscript (Buffalo and Erie County Public Library ); James Fraser Gluck, the Buffalo lawyer and collector (Sotheby's)